I have two avi parts of a film. I want to merge them to make one file.
But cat *.avi > complete.avi gives me just trash. If I just cat pt1.avi > complete.avi, complete.avi is fine, but when I cat pt2.avi >> complete.avi I get trash too.
How to fix it?

Thanks.

You can't do this, because I guess you broke the format of the file. example if in each avi the size is stored in the first bytes then putting 1.avi next to 2.avi will not work as the header is still the one of 1.avi.

You need avimerge. A lot of others tool might do this.

Had the same exact problem. I'm recording AVIs with lavrec, and couldn't merge them. I finally used ffmpeg to convert avi to mpg, then
cat 1.mpg 2.mpg worked perfect. The mpgs are a little smaller, too. Good workaround, unless you absolutly have to have AVI format.

You can use mencoder or trancode to merge avi files. There are gui apps such as Konverter that nake the process easier using a gui.

An example of a succesful join:
$ mencoder -ovc lavc start.avi end.avi -o complete.avi

Avidemux does it with ease and even rebuilds missing frames (smart copy).

mencoder -oac copy -ovc copy part1.avi part2.avi part3.avi -o WHOLE-THING.avi


avimerge is another simple tool for this but i've run into audio sync problems using it, the mencoder method seems to not have this issue.

Since avi is a container and not a codec it depends if one can use the cat method. It can be used with dv avi files. Also with mpg and vob files. But if you are using the cat method you should also use the mencoder with -forceidx on the end file to rebuild broken index.

Hi, I had the same need, to join several chunk of several videos into one single piece. I tried the commands you mentioned but the result was:

1. avidemux couldn't do it, in fact, I used avidemux to edit the videos and extract the chunks, but when I tried to attached all junks in one single always got the message " master index wrong, rebuild?" then I rebuild it but it was the same, I couldn't merge them.

2. mencoder gave me some errors, maybe because I think this command tried to recode the chunks and then merge them, in fact, I've used the same codecs for video and audio but still I can't get it.

The command that worked for me was: avimerge, it just joins all my chunks in one single, the line is:

avimerge -o bigone.avi -i chunk1.avi chunk2.avi chunk3.avi


I hope it's usefull

Regards

Tamayo

Hey thank you for the line to combine chunks of avi files together it worked great with AVIMERGE and it was really fast, only took a few minutes, and I merged 5 files into one. Perfect video, nothing changed, except it converted the 5 chunks into one movie.

Thank you again for your blood sweat and tears, saved me several minutes, and having to go back to Winders to finalize.

Donlok

Your welcome, as a comment, I was working in a 3D project - using blender of course- and I found several problems with the video editing, I found that the problem was the codec - first I use AVI Raw - that was all the issue, I change to mpeg, render all again and the video editing was really easy, but you know, I wrote this because when you're in a hurry to finish the work and something doesn't work you think in a lot of things, in this case, the codec was important.

regards

htamayo

Your welcome, as a comment, I was working in a 3D project - using blender of course- and I found several problems with the video editing, I found that the problem was the codec - first I use AVI Raw - that was all the issue, I change to mpeg, render all again and the video editing was really easy, but you know, I wrote this because when you're in a hurry to finish the work and something doesn't work you think in a lot of things, in this case, the codec was important.

regards

htamayo